US talk show host John Oliver has roasted Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce in the wake of Joyce’s affair with a former staffer.

On his HBO show Last Week Tonight, comedian John Oliver introduced Joyce as a social conservative and said his opposition to same-sex marriage last year was hypocritical.

“Joyce is a social conservative who opposed same-sex marriage in their referendum [sic] last year because he believes in traditional family values. And you can probably see where this is going,” Oliver joked on the program.

“Now you might think that is hypocritical, but in reality Joyce has such incredible family values that he can’t restrict them to just one family.”

Oliver also weighed in on the media coverage around the scandal, including a news report featuring the father of Joyce’s partner appearing to threaten to roast Joyce “on a spit”.

“I think that might be the most Australian man who has ever lived,” he joked.

“In Australia, they don’t have Santa Claus, they just have that guy coming down your chimney and, whether you’ve been bad or good, just beats you with a newspaper.”

Joyce’s electorate of New England returned a majority “yes” vote in last year’s same-sex marriage postal survey, but he left the parliamentary chamber and abstained from the legislation’s final vote in December.